Ann Elizabeth Jagt — Requisiet in Pace

60 On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
61 Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? 62 Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! 63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit[e] and life. 64 Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. 65 He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
66 From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
67 “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
68 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Ann was and remains a Christian. And when we speak of her we would do well to remember that truth first and foremost.

To have been called to be a Christian means ultimately there is an understanding that, having been bought with a price, one’s life is not one’s own, and so all is life is lived under the authority of the Lord Christ who gave Himself as a Sacrifice for His people.

You see in being a Christian one is given the understanding that they are accountable to the God of the whole cosmos and so they fashion their life in keeping with His Word.

This confidence on Ann’s part of the fact that Christ died the just for the unjust so that His people might have Peace with God … that Christ loved Ann and gave Himself for her becomes then the explanation for who God created her and called her to be.

So deeply was this sense of abandonment to Christ owned by Ann that Ann found the passage in John we just read particularly comforting during her long battle with Cancer. In context the Lord Christ had been spoken truths that were hard to accept and as a result fair weather followers begin to peel off from following Christ. Jesus queries His core of 12 disciples if they were going to leave also and they respond with words that speak both of a divinely given understanding and of resolve.

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

The disciples understood here that no matter how difficult the Words of the Lord Christ might be it was simply the case that all other Words were empty words.

Ann embraced this passage because as freely purchased with the blood of Christ she understood that no matter how difficult the path may be it was simply the case that Christ was the answer. Where else could she go with this Cancer? Christ alone had the words of Eternal life. Embitterment was not an option because Christ alone had the words of Eternal life. And so she entrusted herself to Christ and the Providence of God and not only refused embitterment but refused Fear.

One of Ann’s favorite Scripture was

“God has not given us a Spirit of Fear but the power of love and of a sound mind.”

In light of this Word from God Ann did not give into fear and relentlessly taught her children not to give into fear. This, of course is a Christian virtue itself given by the God of all grace. As Christians we are called to fear only God and when we offer up our fear to anything that is not God we, at the same time divinize what ever it is we fear other than God and so become idolaters.

There are many virtues we can rightly speak of regarding Ann but we should recognize that any virtue we speak of says more about the magnificence of the Creator than it does about the Creature.

It was the Gospel of Jesus Christ for Sinners that crafted and shaped Ann. It was Biblical Christianity that explains her family-centric orientation where she submitted to her husband and poured herself into her children. It was the Christian faith that explains her fierce loyalties to friends. It was nothing but the finished work of Christ and the confidence in God’s undeserved love that found her optimistic and cheerful in her living and dying.

This is what the Christian faith does. It takes people, who are remarkably unexceptional in and of themselves, like all of us who call upon the name of Christ, and by the Hands of the Sovereign craftsman it shapes, molds, hammers, and refines so that the result is a person who shines like a star in the Universe. The explanation for a life well lived then is not found in mortals for there is nothing in us that recommends us to God’s favor. The explanation of a life well lived is found in God’s favor as revealed in Christ’s work on the Cross and as then fashioned by the Master’s hands. The explanation in a life well lived is the truth that Grace restores nature.

So, considered proximately the legacy of Ann is her role of wife and mother but ultimately the legacy of Ann is that Her Savior, even in the context of what we might count as severe Mercy, was Faithful to Her.

She lived in confidence of the fact that He alone had the words of Eternal life and she is now at rest in the one who loved her and gave himself for her.

The War On Boundaries

“Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.”

Christianity is a faith characterized by boundaries, hierarchy, and distinctions. The God of Christianity is a God who assigns roles, who segregates (day from night, land from water, sun from moon, female from male, etc.) and whose existence is the means by which all differences are defined.

Perhaps the greatest boundary in Scripture is the one known as the Creator Creature boundary. It is the boundary that the Serpent and our first parents sought to remove. Not satisfied with a creaturely role our first parents aspired to erase the Creator Creature boundary and transcend so to be as God knowing good from evil.

Since that time the temptation for fallen man has been to transcend the boundaries set by God, in order that, by their own fiat word, they themselves could dictate their own boundaries and so create a reality where they erased Gods’ boundaries and set their own, or at other times merely attempt to erase all boundaries so that “all colors bleed into one.”

We live in such a time when the sin du-jour is the war against all boundaries. Man cannot be limited by his race, his ethnicity, his gender, any transcendent ethic, or any ordained status or definition. This mindset is so ubiquitous that by my usage of the pronouns “his” in the last sentence I have already revealed how insensitive I am to the modern demand that a pronoun boundary that prefers the masculine pronoun is an example of the lack of respect for the erasure of the old boundary once characteristic of the English grammar.

According to our Brave New Egalitarian Boundary-less world man must be allowed to make himself over and over again according to his own fiat word and according to his own template. No boundaries can be allowed to stifle or limit man. Gods after all, by definition, may not be limited.

The evidence of the assault on the idea of boundaries is everywhere, but unfortunately it is getting so common that we no longer have the ability to see it given how close we are to the boundary-less state of affairs. On this subject we have arrived at the proverb, “if you want to know what the water is like don’t ask a fish.

Still the evidence is omnipresent,

1.) The US government, in collusion with the National Chamber of commerce and leftist Marxists are currently literally trying to erase the southern border with Mexico.

2.) It is all the rage among judicial tyrants, by the means of legal fiat, to erase a boundary that has been set in place for millennium in Western Civilization which insisted that marriage requires one from each sex. Judges from Indiana to Utah are telling us that the Christian and historic boundary that defined marriage is now passe.

3.) It was just announced that the Speaker of the House is taking the POTUS to court to sue him because he is not honoring the Separation of powers (Boundaries). It seems that the man who is allegedly POTUS doesn’t care for the boundaries that define his position and role. He will erase those boundaries and set his own.

4.) Recently Facebook went from the traditional two gender option (Male — Female) to a new offering of 51 choices. All previous gender boundaries erased. Man can create his own boundaries in terms of gender.

5.) New forms from the Government no longer read in such a way as to fill in names for “Father,” and “Mother,” choosing instead “Parent 1,” and “Parent 2.”

6.) Recently in Houston, Texas it was decided that public restrooms are now boundary-less.

7.) The fashion world is run by sodomites and so they give us female models who look like little boys with breasts. In such a way the boundary between desiring a woman with curves and desiring a little boy is eliminated.

8.) No ID required for voting. This is to eliminate the boundary between Citizen and non-Citizen. It has become so upside down that it is fast becoming more of an advantage to be a non-citizen than to be a citizen.

9.) Even in the Reformed Church there are those who insist that God requires the boundaries of cultures be extinguished. Such men are convinced that only in a cultural-less, boundary-less “Christian” world can God be glorified.

10.) The mantra is relentless which states that a family can be defined anyway one wants. The boundary that once defined a family as blood relation sharing a common faith has now been eliminated. We all understood that there would be exceptions at time to this truth but for generations we held that normatively, the boundary that defined family, was blood relation sharing a common faith.

11.) The next boundary under assault is between adult and child. Already organizations exist that are lobbying for the sex between adult and children.

12.) The Pulpit used to have a boundary around it by following God’s Word in allowing only Men as Elders. That boundary has largely fallen.

13.) With the rise of deconstructionism in literature the boundary between author and reader has been destroyed. The reader is now the author and the author has been eclipsed. This is the inevitable consequence to eliminating a transcendent Author of all reality. If one eliminates God eventually one must eliminate all other authors. Boundaries in literature fall readily.

14.) Sodomy is on the verge of being publicly recognized. Here is another boundary being erased. Heretofore the public understood that male parts went with female parts. That was a boundary. It is now a receding boundary. Whereas the former boundary said that men and women in marriage should work together to create life. The new boundary insists that the life found in man should be surrounded by death found in the male evacuation canal. The new boundary insists that two women should pursue sterility by rejecting men.

All of this destruction of boundaries is the consequence of Kant’s subjectivism and the subsequent rise of Kierkegaardian existentialism. Man cannot reach the noumena realm and therefore men are allowed to arrange the phenomena realm as they will. Wittgenstein reinforced all this with his language games and postmodernism has sealed the deal for the everyday man on the street.

The elimination of stable and shared boundaries can not help but lead to social order upheaval. No society can long withstand a boundary-less world in religion, morals, fashion, art, education, law, etc. Further the elimination of stable and shared boundaries means the persecution of those who do insist that transcendent boundaries exist. If Biblical Christians will not share in the Brave New Boundary-less world where the only boundaries will be the elimination of boundaries then Biblical Christians become enemies to the State God.

Anthony Esolen on this matter offers this insight on how God is a God who created a world with God given boundaries,

“When God made the world, He made things, with their characteristic boundaries. That is what the sacred author of Job insists upon. God said to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And, “Who shut up the sea within doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” and said, “to here shall you come, but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?”

Likewise in Genesis we see that God divides and distinguishes when He creates, not only when He divides the light from the darkness, and sets the firmament between heaven and earth, and orders the waters into one place so that the dry land may appear. He does so when He makes every living thing after its kind, a crucial phrase for understanding the whole. The kinds are so by means of boundaries: an apple tree brings forth apple blossoms after its kind; birds flock together and mate after their kinds. Man too is made after his kind, male and female; and it is characteristic of man to be made by God, for God: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

The sad thing in all of this is that when mankind tears down God’s ordained boundaries they at the same time tear down themselves. Man is not God and man cannot violate God’s order and boundaries without at the same time violating himself.

We live in a time and epoch where boundaries are being attacked. This time is not likely to end soon unless God is pleased to graciously visit us with judgment.

Morecraft’s Great Delight

“I gave a couple messages on Racism a few years ago — condemning Racism as blasphemous and all kinds of terrible things. And I got this letter, and this letter was, I guess, 15-20 pages long. This guy had spent a great amount of time and effort writing me this letter rebuking me and it wasn’t … I mean it was intellectual, it wasn’t nice, it wasn’t sweet, it was very nasty and uh I read the 1st paragraph and I saw where it was going and I threw it in the trash. I took great delight that this guy had spent hours writing this letter and I read one paragraph. He wanted me to respond and I’m here to tell you today he wasn’t worth it.”

Rev. Joe Morecraft
Recent Sunday Sermon

1.) I’m glad Rev. Morecraft is against Racism. Once the definition of Racism is agreed upon every Christian minister should be opposed to Racism.

2.) He says that the person who wrote this letter is not worth answering and then proceeds to answer him in this anonymous type fashion.

3.) If he didn’t read the letter, save the first paragraph, as he insists, then how could he possibly know it was “Intellectual?”

4.) Likewise, if he didn’t read the letter, save the the first paragraph, as he insists, how could he know it wasn’t nice and was “nasty?”

That must have been some kind of opening paragraph.

5.) I know of one person who sent Rev. Morecraft a 5 page open letter that was substantive, intellectual and engaging. I guess that was a different letter than this 15-20 page letter. Rev. Morecraft didn’t answer that one either … unless he’s confused the two letters and is answering it here.

What Do These Three Men Have In Common?

This from the book, “New Covenant Theology: Questions Answered.” — pg. 154

“Suppose that it were legal in our country for a man to marry his sister. If this were the case, and a man who attended your church wanted to marry his sister, would your church perform the wedding?”

Answer

“We need to get our initial shivers and our “yuck, ick, disgusting” first reactions out of the way. . . . In the New Covenant Scriptures no mention is made of the impropriety of marrying one’s sister. Although the practice is illegal in many countries, which makes it sinful for Christians living in those countries to do (Romans 13:1), it seems that if you and your sister are both believers and you live in a country that deems marriage between siblings to be a lawful practice, then your marriage would be holy in God’s sight.”

Rev. Steve Lehrer
Pastor — Lighthouse Baptist Church in Sussex, Wisconsin
Educated @ Westminster Seminary — California

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1.) If one insists that the Mosaic covenant was a “covenant of works,” in a way, per the Republication theory, all kinds of bizarre stuff is bound to follow.

2.) Rev. Lehrer has made the State to be “God walking on the Earth,” since the state in his scheme is that agency which defines what is and is not sin.

3.) I also have shivers and a “yuck, ick, disgusting” reaction to Bestiality. Must I get over that also since the New Covenant Scriptures make no mention of bedding your favorite Heifer?

Now, I freely admit that New Covenant Theology might be sightly different than full blown R2K, HOWEVER, some of the R2K chaps who were educated at the same Institution that Lehrer was have said some similar things.

Here are two examples,

“Not being a theonomist or theocrat, I do not believe it is the state’s role to enforce religion or Christian morality. So allowing something legally is not the same as endorsing it morally. I don’t want the state punishing people for practicing homosexuality. Other Christians disagree. Fine. That’s allowed. That is the distinction. Another example – beastiality (sic) is a grotesque sin and obviously if a professing member engages in it he is subject to church discipline. But as one who leans libertarian in my politics, I would see problems with the state trying to enforce it; not wanting the state involved at all in such personal practices; I’m content to let the Lord judge it when he returns. A fellow church member might advocate for beastiality (sic) laws. Neither would be in sin whatever the side of the debate. Now if the lines are blurry in these disctinctions,(sic) that is always true in pastoral ministry dealing with real people in real cases in this fallen world.”

Rev. Todd Bordow — Reformed Minister
R2K Practitioner
Educated at Westminster West — California

“Although a contractual relationship denies God’s will for human dignity, I could affirm domestic partnerships as a way of protecting people’s legal and economic security.”

“The challenge there is that two Christians who hold the same beliefs about marriage as Christians may appeal to neighbor-love to support or to oppose legalization of same-sex marriage.”

Dr. Mike Horton — Reformed Theologian
R2K Practitioner
Professor at Westminster West — California

How long until people begin to realize that Westminster West –California is a serious problem?

Marxinov on Culture … McAtee on Marxinov

“The more Christianity gains ground, and the more Christians become with their religion, the less cultural differences we will see in the world. In the final day of history, every place on the planet will have the same covenantal views of God, man, law, judgment, and future, and therefore every place on the earth will have the same cultural practices informed by the Christian faith.

In short: people choose their religion, their religion determines their culture. When the world as a whole accepts the Christian religion, the world will be one culture.”

– Bojidar Marxinov

1.) Throughout History the European Protestants formed distinct Protestant cultures. The Swiss Protestants were different from the English Protestants who were different from the German Protestants, who were different from the Dutch Protestants. Is Marxinov telling us that some or all of them were in sin and that postmillennialism requires us to eliminate the differences between Bavinck and Warfield — between Kuyper and Hodge?

2.) Also we need to ask, why is it, given the few cultures that have been considered Christian, by any reasonable estimation, have not all been the same throughout history? If all Christian culture will look the same why didn’t the Christian culture of Charlemagne look the same as the Christian culture of Calvin’s Geneva or why didn’t Calvin’s Geneva look like Puritan New England? Was it because one or all of them were in deep sin?

3.) Marxinov has not taken into considerations the likelihood that Theonomists in one Christian country will come to a different understandings of how the law of God applies in different settings and situations. The reality of this almost certainty has the explanatory power to demonstrate why there might remain legal – jurisprudent differences between two nations in the Postmillennial Kingdom fully flowered.

4.) Marxinov has lost the Many in his search for the One. His God (and so his view of culture) is the view of the Unitarian. Marxinov, channelling U2 actually does believe that all colors will bleed into one. Marxinov has embraced unity and no diversity now remains. Rushdoony pointedly warned against this.

5.) Marxinov’s vision runs face flat into the wall of God’s Word where we find the Nations as Nations still existing in the New Jerusalem. In Revelation 5:9, 7:9 and in 22:2 we do not find the presence of an amalgamated whole in the New Jerusalem, but rather the distinctions of the Nations remain. Marxinov has lost the understanding that Grace restores nature and has exchanged it for the understanding that Grace destroys nature and replaces it.

6.) Marxinov’s vision is the same vision of Saruman who started off with the best of intentions in resisting Mordor but who, because of his desire to save the world, became as evil as Sauron in trying to save the world. Marxinov in seeking to save the world from Marx is actually in competition with Marx seeking to out Marx … Marx.

What a wonderful coincidence that Bojidar’s last name is Marxinov.